This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| French Infrastructure for Integrated Structural Biology | |
|---|---|
| Name | French Infrastructure for Integrated Structural Biology |
| Abbreviation | FRISB |
| Formation | 2010s |
| Headquarters | Paris |
| Region served | France |
French Infrastructure for Integrated Structural Biology.
The French Infrastructure for Integrated Structural Biology is a national research infrastructure coordinating structural biology resources across France to support research in biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, pharmacology and materials science. It links major centers such as Institut Pasteur, CNRS, INSERM, CEA and universities including Sorbonne University, Université de Strasbourg, Université de Grenoble Alpes to provide access to techniques like X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. The infrastructure interfaces with European and international initiatives such as European Molecular Biology Laboratory, EMBL-EBI, Instruct-ERIC and Horizon Europe to promote translational projects tied to pharmaceutical industry and public health efforts.
The infrastructure functions as a distributed network that aggregates capacities at nodes like Institut Curie, École normale supérieure (Paris), University of Montpellier and Université de Lille to serve academic groups, biotechnology companies and consortia associated with European Research Council grants and ANR programs. It offers users access to high-end instruments including facilities comparable to those at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, SOLEIL (synchrotron), ESRF beamlines, as well as cryo-EM platforms aligned with Thermo Fisher Scientific standards. Coordination ensures integration with databases curated by Protein Data Bank partners and bioinformatics resources from CNRS UMR units.
Origins trace to collaborations among Institut Pasteur, CNRS laboratories and CEA platforms during the 2000s, formalized in the 2010s amid European calls driven by Horizon 2020 and national roadmaps from Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche. Initiatives were influenced by international infrastructures such as Instruct-ERIC, ELIXIR and projects funded through European Research Area mechanisms. Milestones include establishment of centralized access portals modeled after EMBL services, consolidation around major sites like Grenoble and Strasbourg, and participation in consortia responding to pandemics alongside Institut Pasteur and Inserm.
A governance board composed of representatives from CNRS, INSERM, CEA, Ministère de la Défense (for certain translational projects) and leading universities sets scientific priorities, while operational nodes are run by site directors drawn from laboratories such as Institut Pasteur, Institut Curie, Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS) and university mixed research units (UMR). Key partners include European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, SOLEIL, ESRF, EMBL, Instruct-ERIC and regional entities like Région Île-de-France. User access committees incorporate experts from European Molecular Biology Organization and funding agencies like Agence nationale de la recherche.
Core platforms encompass high-end cryo-electron microscopy facilities at centers comparable to Cryo-EM Facility (EMBL) standards, hundreds of X-ray crystallography beamline access hours at ESRF and SOLEIL, advanced nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy suites linked to groups such as those at ENS Lyon, and native mass spectrometry cores akin to Thermo Fisher-configured laboratories. Complementary technologies include synchrotron radiation resources, automated sample preparation robots inspired by platforms at Diamond Light Source, and computational clusters interoperable with PRACE and Grid'5000 for structural modeling and cryo-EM image processing using software from CCP4, RELION, Phenix and Rosetta teams.
Research themes span structural vaccinology coordinated with Institut Pasteur and Institut Curie, membrane protein structural biology in collaboration with CNRS UMR groups and pharmaceutical partners such as Sanofi and Servier, integrative structural studies relevant to neuroscience centers including Institute of Neurosciences de Grenoble, and structural enzymology linked to industrial biotechnology projects with CEA spin-offs. Programs align with international initiatives like Human Cell Atlas-adjacent structural efforts, structural approaches to SARS-CoV-2 led by consortia incorporating INSERM teams, and multi-scale imaging collaborations with Institut Pasteur microscopy networks.
The infrastructure runs training schools and workshops modeled on programs by EMBL Training Centre, Instruct-ERIC training, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory-style courses, targeting students from École Polytechnique, Université de Bordeaux and partner institutions. Outreach includes hosting symposia with participation from European Research Council laureates, collaborative projects with industry partners such as Sanofi and biotechnology SMEs, and data-sharing policies coordinated with Protein Data Bank and ELIXIR to ensure FAIR principles.
Funding is a mix of national allocations from Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, competitive grants from Agence nationale de la recherche, European funding through Horizon Europe and infrastructure investments tied to regional councils like Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Governance integrates stakeholders from CNRS, INSERM, CEA and university leadership, with strategic planning oriented toward fulfilling priorities set by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures and aligning with initiatives from Instruct-ERIC and ELIXIR.
Category:Research infrastructures in France